I have a local linux ws and a remote one sitting across in a different continent where I need to do extensive Java development using Eclipse IDE. I have been using NX for quite sometime now and it is working very well for me. This series of articles have clearly explained why.

I've probably installed freenx and nxclient a dozen times, and each time it has been a hellishly difficult process. One can do a vanilla install on two hosts on the same LAN, with virtually everthing set up correctly, and still get the dreaded "Using auth method: publickey / Authentication failed" message. So my conclusion is that it might be better to seek other ways of remotely accessing machines at this point than freenx.

"I've probably installed freenx and nxclient a dozen times, and each time it has been a hellishly difficult process."

I can second that, I had to install freenx on some machines last year and the configuration almost drove me crazy. The same client asked me to update these machines to the new nx server. I tried to install it on some local machines and it went very smooth!

thanks for the great series of articles about FreeNX which you publish here.

One thing tho, to which I never found a solution on the nomachine site or elsewhere:

When using the rdesktop feature from a Windows NoMachine client to a FreeNX (Debian-based) server (as proxy) to a Windows 2003 server at some client's site, I don't get a german keyboard layout - no matter what I choose in the NXclient. Even after adding german locales (and setting them as default) on the Debian proxy, there's no way to change that. Using version 1.5 didn't make a difference, and, suprisingly: when using the client on Debian (english desktop) as well, all just plain works [TM]!

Hey Wolfgang,
I'm getting the exact same bug i think: I connect with a Windows-NX-Client (2.0.0.98) to a SUSE linux machine with recent FreeNX straight from nomachine.com and the f***ing Keyboard layout will only be English! Even though i have on both machines German-Keyboard as default, and also selected "German" in the NXClient.

This bug shouldn't affect the NoMachine NX server and, as far as I can say, it is not a bug of nxdesktop, as nxdesktop uses the keyboard correctly, according to the settings of the remote X server.

On Windows the keyboard settings are downloaded by the NX server to the client upon session startup. This is a feature of NX server that is activated whenever the remote X server is unable to handle the keyboard initialization locally, for example if the X server lacks the XKB tools and related keymap files. This makes much simpler to create thin client setups where only the X server is deployed, without the X libraries and the additional tools (as in the NX client for Windows).

I don't know how FreeNX handles this but the feature was implemented in November 2004. There was a long thread in the NX project's mailing list and Fabian and Kurt should have received copy of it. It shouldn't be difficult for the FreeNX guys to implement this in the same way as it is implemented in the NoMachine NX server.